The scene of the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing, as it looks today.Credit:Tony Moore

But there is nothing at the site - the corner of Amelia Street and St Paul's Terrace in Fortitude Valley - where family can acknowledge the death of their brothers, their sisters and relatives.

In Childers, where 15 people were died in 2000, there is an artwork and a memorial.

There is also a memorial at Port Arthur in Tasmania, where Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people and wounded 23 others.

In Fortitude Valley there is nothing. Just a shop downstairs and a business upstairs.

Helen Palethorpe.Credit:Tony Moore

Friday was the first time any combined service had been held to say goodbye to the 15 who died at Whiskey Au Go Go .

Ms Palethorpe knew nobody when she arrived at the memorial on Friday clutching a white feather, but she left with a sense of communal dignity.

Her brother Leslie was in the Army. She was 14. It was her birthday the day after her brother was killed.

Leslie was 20-years-old and had shifted from Townsville's Lavarack Barracks to Enoggera for training. His family lived in Redcliffe.

He arrived in Brisbane the day before he was murdered on March 8, 1973.

"He just went out with a couple of boys that night. He was 20 years old, just 20," Ms Palethorpe said with tears gathering in her eyes. Leslie had just married and had a 10-month-old son.

"Ironically my mother was also in Brisbane that night at a play."

Helen's mum had been to see Hair, a monster hit in Australia that year.

"And she heard a voice yell out. And it was him with the other two boys and they stopped and my mum got to give him a cuddle and a kiss.

"And he said he would visit her and us kids on the weekend."

Leslie and his two friends had been to Brisbane's Land Office Hotel in George Street, but were turned away because they did not have ties.

"He was with another young man named [William] Nolan and another young man.

"So as far as I know, they said goodbye to Mum and came here," Ms Palethorpe said, gesturing to site of the former nightclub.

She said her mother never recovered from Leslie's death.

"My mother never got over it; ever, ever ever. Until she died a year ago. Never."

Leslie's second son – his wife was three months pregnant at the time of his death – followed him into the Army, serving with peacekeepers in Cambodia and Rwanda.

Ms Palethorpe said all the victims' family members she spoke to yesterday wanted some form of memorial at the site.

"I think that would be wonderful," she said. "There really does need to be something here."

"I mean my brother is buried at Mt Gravatt and I don't go over there very often."

The service was organised by crime writer Tony Reeves and Pastor Len Donaldson, who was the preacher to Edna Watts, mother of hardman John Andrew Stuart, who was convicted of the nightclub arson alongside James Richard Finch.

Both Mr Reeves and Pastor Donaldson said they had ben asked by victims' families for some form of memorial.

State MP Rob Cavalluci (Central) and local councillor Vicki Howard have begun talks to create a tribute of some form.